Reasons for singing – or protesting

On the gun-grey first day of the European Union’s (final?) summit on its long-term budget for 2014-20, farmers from the Baltic states sang – in sleet, slush and winds – to the emptied roundabout that normally carries traffic past the EU’s institutions. Few may have heard their singing, but it was a clever protest: it echoed the ‘singing revolution’ of 1987-91 when singing was a form of protest against the Soviet Union. It also provided a contrast to the protests of Belgian and other farmers who reasonably frequently take to the streets of Brussels. From these budget talks, the Balts – and other farmers from the former communist states – will emerge as second-class farmers for another seven years, probably receiving 70% of the per-capita support that farmers from the older member states will receive. Yet while the farmers from the ‘West’ protest with frozen milk and blaring horns, the farmers from the ‘East’ sing.

In the twittersphere, the laurels for campaigning probably go to the development-aid community: #euco has been full of their budget demands, as well as of journalists’ snippets.

They need to be campaigning hard, because they will not find many (or any?) champions among the EU leaders. In the draft budget discussed by EU leaders in November, the budget for the EU’s global activities – including development aid, but also enlargement policy and humanitarian crises – was reduced by €5bn, to €65bn. On top of that, the EU’s member states discussed reducing the €30bn budget proposed for an off-budget item – the European Development Fund – by €3bn, a disproportionately large cut.

It is easy enough to see why development campaigners struggle to find anyone to champion them. After all, if money has to be cut, it is easiest to cut it from those who do not vote for you. Development aid may matter to a substantial number of voters in some countries, but it not easy for a prime minister to sell himself as a winner if at the same time he has to explain very politically sensitive cuts to communities at home.

Other reasons may help to explain why the big cuts in development aid have not been the subject of much debate by EU leaders:

Firstly, failing to provide development aid give is not very embarrassing, at least politically. All but a handful of EU states have for decades failed to honour their pledges to the UN, to spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid. Why make aid payments an issue here and now?

Secondly, there is an easy political alternative. If prime ministers want to improve – or temper – their image on aid, they can increase the aid commitments in their national budget, rather than to the EU budget and the European Development Fund. Some prime ministers could even try to spin national management as being better (though this would go against the development community’s general view that pooling aid at the EU level adds value).

Thirdly, an era is over and, with it, a European sense of obligation is waning. The rapid rise of other powers is coupled with an expectation that they should contribute more to international development aid; the weakness of Europe amplifies the questions about how much it gives to others and how. Why help India when it is growing strongly and has so many millionaires? One answer is obvious: 68% of the world’s second most populous country lived on less than $2 in 2010. Which in turn leads to the riposte: India’s wealthy – and India’s increasingly wealthy state – should do more. At which point the debate becomes ever more philosophical and ever more practical and ever more sophisticated – and less likely to win over voters not personally touched by the developing world’s problems.

Fourthly, trade has become increasingly prominent in the EU’s thinking on development. In the European Commission’s ‘agenda for change’ proposal, presented in 2011, this largely goes under the phrase ‘aid for trade’ – developing a country’s ability to trade by (for example) improving customs offices and helping factories meet Europe’s health-and-safety standards. Is the EU developing poorer countries' capacity to trade primarily as a route out of poverty, or primarily as a means of gradually cutting back development aid? For prime ministers’ immediate post-summit purposes, that question is academic. When – or if – pressed on cuts to development aid, they can state simply that ‘we believe that the best route out of poverty is through trade, many of our long-standing development partners are increasingly successful traders, and we are encouraging that trend with better targeted aid’.